The war in Ukraine is still raging more than a year after Russia invaded the country, but for Ukrainian Jews, the upcoming Passover holiday will be a time for togetherness, with thousands set to gather for large communal Seders, as well as smaller ones in people’s homes, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.

Salvation and hope: Preparations for Passover this year were easier than last year, when the festival fell a little over a month after the war began and the country was still in a state of major upheaval and uncertainty, according to a number of people involved in the efforts. Now, however, the Jewish community – and the country as a whole – is facing a different challenge: a war with no clear end in sight. “Last year, there were a lot of refugees so that was more the focus. This year is more about salvation and hope. People feel like [the war] is not going to end so they need more spiritual power to keep going,” Rabbi Irina Gritsevskaya, the executive director of Midreshet Schechter in Israel and the head of Ukraine’s Masorti community, told eJP this week, speaking over the phone from Poland as she made her way by train to Kyiv, where she will remain for the holiday.

Symbol of togetherness: For Inna Vdovichenko, the head of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee office in Odesa, the Passover Seder is a “symbol of freedom, a symbol of togetherness,” both of which she said the Ukrainian Jewish community needs now. After more than a year of war, members of the Ukrainian Jewish community are looking forward to an opportunity “to hug each other, to eat food together,” Vdovichenko told eJP. JDC will host more than 200 Seders of varying sizes across the country, some in-person and some online. In total, JDC believes that upwards of 10,000 people will attend its ritual meals. The organization said it will also provide Seder kits so that hundreds of Jews can host meals in their own homes.Feeling liberated: Chabad, a dominant force for religious life in Ukraine, will host 90 community Seders across the country, including in some of the cities and villages seeing fierce fighting. “We will make sure every Jew can feel liberated this Passover, even as the war continues,” Rabbi Avraham Wolff, director of Chabad of Odesa, said in a statement.

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A potential rules change at the Department of Education could undermine regulations that have been used to protect Jewish students’ rights on campus, Ken Marcus, the chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, cautioned last week, reports Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod.

Free speech?: The Department of Education (ED) recently solicited comments regarding regulations, implemented during the Trump administration, that conditioned grants to higher education institutions on upholding students’ free speech rights. At public schools, these conditions were tied to First Amendment protections, while at private schools they were linked to enforcement of the schools’ own free expression policies. If students could prove in court that their rights had been violated, ED could penalize the schools for noncompliance with the grant conditions.

A powerful tool: Marcus told JI that repealing these protections would remove a tool that has been used to protect Jewish and pro-Israel students. He pointed specifically to the 2021 case of Duke University, where a pro-Israel club was denied recognition based on its views. The Duke student government reversed course in 2022 and voted to recognize the group. “We were able to insist that the university reverse itself because otherwise this would be a free speech violation that could lead to significant liability for the university,” he said. “This gave the Jewish pro-Israel students a much more powerful tool than they otherwise would have had to address the silencing of pro-Israel perspectives.”

Costly recourse: ED’s request for information states that stakeholders had raised concerns that elements of the regulation “unnecessarily go beyond what is required by the courts, encourage campus community members to pursue litigation more frequently and undermine existing campus procedures,” adding additional costs for schools. The document further alleges that the regulations “may incentivize private colleges to limit, eliminate, or reconsider their policies on free speech for fear of losing grant funds.”

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“The concept of ‘learned helplessness,’ coined by psychologist Martin Seligman, became the cornerstone of his groundbreaking positive psychology theory that now helps millions overcome depression and anxiety,” writes Andrés Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Resigned to their fate: “Seligman observed laboratory animals that were subjected to random, unavoidable, mild electric shocks. Understanding that they would be shocked regardless of their behavior, trapped in an environment they could not escape, these animals cowered in lethargy and apathy. Resigned to their fate, they simply waited for the next blow, convinced that they were helpless to avoid it.”

What tyrants know: “Something similar happened to the Israelites in Egypt. There’s a level of suffering, writes psychiatrist Erich Fromm in The Fear of Freedom, that deprives people of the will to escape it. They become automatons, putting one foot in front of the other, only concerned with avoiding the capricious whip of the foreman. Pharaoh, like all tyrants, knew that.”

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“Making the greatest possible impact towards solving the growing climate crises is the primary factor that governs my philanthropy, investments and political activities,” writes Michael W. Sonnenfeldt, founder and chairman of TIGER 21, a membership network for high-net-worth individuals, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Desertification: “Arid lands have long been home to 20-25% of humanity. These dry areas, constituting 35-40% of the world’s land mass, are likely to be the hardest hit by the process of desertification, which climate change is accelerating, putting the well-being and even survival of more than 2 billion people further at risk. The challenge before us is an imposing one. Yet the country that is arguably in the best position to solve it is roughly the size of New Jersey.”

Philanthropy and ingenuity: “Last year, my wife and I made a long-term commitment to establish Ben-Gurion University’s Goldman Sonnenfeldt School of Sustainability and Climate Change, the first of its kind in Israel. At the same time, investor and venture capitalist John Doerr donated $1.1 billion to Stanford University to create a school focused on climate change and sustainability. That amount is more than 50 times as large as our commitment, which was made for a similar purpose. Given its size, how can our donation possibly approach the same impact as the one Doerr thankfully made to Stanford? The answer lies in the unparalleled ingenuity of Israel, which will maximize every penny of our philanthropic commitment.”

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